Resource Translation Under Constraint: A Conditional Process Model of Women’s Subjective Career Success

Abstract

Over the past few decades, women’s participation in the workforce has increased significantly across both developed and developing economies. Despite this progress, women remain underrepresented in senior leadership and executive positions. This persistent gap suggests that access to employment does not automatically translate into career advancement. Researchers increasingly argue that career progression depends not only on individual capabilities but also on the ability to access and mobilise organisational and relational resources. Although the number of women employed has increased, there continues to be a lack of women in leadership and obstacles to their professional growth. Current research has focused on family responsibilities, mentoring and perceived organisational support (POS) as independent predictors of career success; however, additive models do not adequately account for how organisational climates become subjective career success when there are structural barriers to providing caregiving. Using Social Cognitive Theory, Conservation of Resources Theory, and Social Exchange Theory, this research study proposes a conditional process model that explains women’s subjective career success as resource mobilization. Research study aims at analysing women’s subjective career success as the mobilisation of organisational, relational, and psychological resources, including mentoring support, institutional backing, and professional self-efficacy.
Mentoring is positioned within this model as the relational channel through which POS is transferred into psychological and developmental resources; whereas, familial obligations function as a structural barrier to this resource transfer. The model improves the theoretical framework by differentiating between psychological efficacy and Structured Ability to effect or enact the resources. This reframing pushes beyond additive models of predictors towards explaining gender differences in career progression as a process. Thus, providing a rationale for why mentoring has different outcomes for advancement in women under conditions of different levels of caregiving responsibility. By reconceptualising women’s career success as cumbersome resource mobility rather than as individual aspiration against a block, this theory provides authority to explain the discord between gendered distributions of career paths developed.